China will revise 600 national standards for food safety
inspection to bring them into line with international practice by
2010, a government industry watchdog announced Thursday.
Qiu Yueming, a senior official with the Standardization
Administration of China, said the country's test standards lagged
behind international practice, leading to failed testing results on
overseas markets.
Qiu cited the case of milk powder, which was difficult to export
due to inadequate carbohydrate testing.
The government has waged a massive campaign since August to
address product quality and food safety issues, which includes
agricultural products, food processing industries and medicine.
Pu Changcheng, deputy director of the General Administration of
Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, also said Thursday
that trade protectionism had triggered criticisms of Chinese
products, but it was unfair to denigrate the "made-in-China" label
or regard Chinese goods as inferior.
The government had introduced a series of measures to improve
the quality, such as tagging qualifying labels on export goods and
filing registrations of export-oriented fruit farms, said Pu.
"If any single item is found to be unqualified, it might cause
restrictions or bans on the whole industry," he said, adding that
such a system would "protect the long-term interests of
manufacturers, especially farmers."
Pu stressed that "quality" should be the priority to compete in
the international market. "We need to ensure there is no major
quality problem in export goods and to prevent problematic imports
from entering our market."
(Xinhua News Agency November 9, 2007)